camping in a vintage trailer

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As was posted a while ago, my little trailer was asked to become part of the set backstage at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, one of the country's largest (if not the largest) free multi day music festival. HSB as it's known, is a Bay Area treasure which along with the Treasure Island Music Festival and Bridge School Benefit makes October a very special month for music here abouts.

Created 12 years ago by the late Warren Hellman, the Bluegrass loving Billionaire and antidote to wall street greed and inhumanity, to introduce his beloved San Francisco to Bluegrass music, Strictly Bluegrass evolved from a 2 day 3 stage affair to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass a 3 day, 6 stage, multi genre music extravaganza that well over 100,000 attend each year. To give you an idea..Here's the line up from this year.

I had spent the better part of the last 3 weeks getting Aguadream a new paint job and generally cleaning and spiffing her up to be ready for her big debut. I'll back in another po…

So as you know I have to get my little trailer painted in time for Hardly Strictly Blue Grass the first weekend of October. I decided to roll on paint using the $50 dollar paint job method that is very popular for both cars and trailers. If I had it to do over again I would probably try to spray cause it took so long!

Getting Started--Primer Day 1After maybe 15 hours of prep work done over the course of a week, my fellow vintage trailer friend Soni came over the lend a hand for the day. We finished up the prep and taping by noon. Followed with self etching primer--2 coats with wet sanding between and after. Then laid down the first top coat with a roller...Ace Rust Stop (basically rustoleum) paint (tinted to Benjamin Moore Mexicali Turquoise) thinned 50% mineral spirits, but no hardener. I'm thinking maybe too thin, and need to go ahead and pop for hardener (Japan Drier is all they have at HD and my local paint store) which I'll never use all of, just so that it dries in a…

I consider myself fortunate to have retained the original dinette bench seats complete with springs. These are very comfortable both to sit on and sleep on but the original vinyl after 56 years was showing it's age. Time for a facelift. Estimates for a custom upholstery job...ran upwards of $700 for both seats--so DIY was definitely in order. Readers of this blog know I had been considering up-cycling vinyl saved from convention signs. I even went so far as to pick out sheets of vinyl. Several factors kept me from proceeding.

Not much experience sewing vinyl and a home sewing machine. Fear that the pattern would have detracted from the overall lookConcern that the ink on the vinyl might bleed upon interaction wtih sunscreen.
So I decided instead to go with Sunbrella fabric (found for $13/yd with free shipping, job required 5 yards) for it's durability, water resistance, UV protection. For my seats I'm using Glacier Blue with a Kiwi Green piping. Very simple, and …

Just got back from the 2012 Fall Strawberry Music Festival. Gorgeous weather and the exceptional line up more than made up for the much more crowded camping scene. Below is the "road" the first line of Strawberry that begins before dawn on the First Day of the Festival as 4-5 miles of vehicles await entry and then an orderly but urgent scramble to obtain their cherished campsite.

The line: We were about a mile back even though we pulled onto the road well before the stated 6 am line up time. That's us in the middle, and then a miles long line behind us.

We ended up with a fairly nice campsite, nearby our usual spot. We did have a fairly cozy relationship with a rather large tree branch. The new door and screen door worked out brilliantly!

Ben wasted no time hopping on his bike with all of his climbing gear to find a suitable spot to set up an anchor and rappel. He spent hours scrambling on the big granite outcropping along Sunrise Trail.

Aguadream will be featured as part of the backstage set at Banjo Stage, the main stage, at this year's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (fondly known as either HSB or Hardly Strictly). HSB is perhaps the worlds largest free music festival, held each year the first weekend of October in Golden Gate Park. You can learn more about HSB and the legacy of it's founder and benefactor, the late Warren Hellman at
http://www.strictlybluegrass.com/ Apparently this years theme is Travel America, including a huge "Mt Rushmore" featuring the faces of some of the legends who have passed this year including Hellman, Doc Watson, Hazel Dickens and Earl Scruggs.
Of course, this will mean a flurry of activity to get her looking her absolute best. I've been reupholstering the dinette seats, and this weekend is Painting!! A few finishing touches after that and she'll be the belle of the ball.

I have been a little obsessed lately with paint. Now that the doors are "almost" done (still need to hang it) I am turning my attention to the most obvious undone aspect of my restoration....exterior paint. There are many options here...most of which have their own sub options.The first decision was DIY or send it out or a combination.Send it OutMaaco $500-800 depending on the amount of prep required.Higher End Resto/Paint shop $2-3K or moreCombinationDo the prep myself-- send it out/hireHire the prep out -- paint it myselfEither of these probably comes out to costing around the price of MaacoDIY-- great resources and discussions at these forums Rolled On or the Vintage Shasta Trailer Forum(VSTF)Rattle Cans--believe it, some very nice paint jobs have been done with rattle cans, this link is to a video by a VSTF member$50 paint job--
with Rustoleum or equivalent Alkyd Enamel roller method http://www.freewebs.com/kc8jwa/painttechniques.htmHVLP sprayer (borrowing spray gu…

Been working on some more of the final touches in preparation for painting. The door and screen door on my old trailer were really a mess, but I'd been putting off doing anything about them out of some weird psychological blockage that if I took off the door and couldn't fix it I wouldn't be able to camp again. So I had suffered with an exterior door which only closed with a gentle nudge at one corner and a screen door that took so much fighting to open and close that it had been nearly torn apart. So when our July 4th camping trip fell through (not happy about that) I decided to put the time to good use and tackle the doors.

Long story short so far it's been pretty straight forward. Taking apart the doors was easy. I used the old ones as templates and got to work. The aluminum trim was shot so I took them down to the local sheet metal shop to get new ones fabricated. They will be ready sometime next week. I built out the frame and added a new birch interior sk…

Fallen Leaf Lake near Tahoe is a wonderful campground, and the site of an informal annual gathering of vintage campers organized by Kathy Lebs. All in all about 30 folks and 20 trailers and numerous four legged friends of various vintages sizes and states of restoration showed up for a few days of relaxing, hiking, and potlucks. Unlike trailer rallies, this was much more casual...no schedule...no organized tours or clinics...just a bunch of friends enjoying the natural surroundings and each others company and common interest in aluminum homes on wheels. My son Ben was off on an adventure of his own for the weekend, so Lucy my Lab and I enjoyed a grown up weekend.

A couple of firsts:
1. Hike to Cathedral Lake in Desolation Wilderness...stunning, and an 1800 ft gain in elevation.
2. Wahdingers-- a campfire treat of biscuit dough baked on sticks (dowels) and then stuffed with goodies, yum!